ANOTHER VIEW: Baseball and governors: Three strikes and you’re out

REP. DENNIS RICHARDSON

Saturday, February 8, 2014

By REP. DENNIS RICHARDSON

Oregon has become a national joke, as the much-ballyhooed Cover Oregon health care website rollout has ground to a halt. This grand fiasco was brought to you by the governor’s staff, with his explicit approval.

It could have been avoided. For months, I and other legislators repeatedly urged state officials to listen to the warnings of two separate outside evaluators.

Over a year before the collapse, I wrote to fellow legislators and the governor in September 2012, based on meetings I was having with both the quality assurance firm hired by the Legislature to monitor the project and with the legislative fiscal office in my role as the co-chair of Ways and Means. I said, “We cannot afford another failed state IT project. Too many times in the past, elected leaders merely went along with well-intending bureaucrats who, after millions of taxpayer dollars had been squandered, could only make apologies, cast blame or retire and begin collecting their generous PERS annuity.”

I even called the governor the third week of September and urged him to intervene with his officials. He promised me he would “take a look” at the project. I told him that as CEO of this state the result “would rest on his shoulders.”

During legislative hearings the following December, then-Rep. Patrick Sheehan sounded the alarm in the Joint Legislative Audits and Information Management and Technology Committee meeting.

The state had obtained $48 million to build the Cover Oregon software from scratch. Rep. Sheehan had been in contact with representatives from a company that had already developed such software, which could have been licensed for $6 million and customized for another $6 million. He had even received live demonstrations of the software. The governor’s officials ignored these warnings and went ahead with their plans to use Oracle, the same company that is now being blamed for the program’s almost $200 million failure.

These problems could very well be the tip of the iceberg. The head of the Oregon Health Authority has revealed that the exchange would have to enroll 145,000 people in private plans and lower its overhead 20 percent in order to be self-sustaining by the end of the year, when federal grant funds expire. OHA is also expected to have a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall in the 2017-19 biennium.

Since the governor has failed to take decisive action to stop the wasteful spending on Cover Oregon, I have introduced legislation, in response to the current crisis, to end Cover Oregon and hand over the exchange to the federal government. While their system isn’t perfect and has also had problems, it is much closer to operational than ours is.

The governor, on the other hand, wants to spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars producing an investigation that will duplicate findings that are already public, but empowers the governor to embargo them, so neither the Legislature nor the public can see them. This is not a study. It’s an attempt to create paralysis by analysis.

The governor is uninvolved. His tendency to walk away from his own projects has led to numerous expensive failures. The Columbia River Crossing project has burned through over $180 million on studies, some dubious, and has produced only an audit so bad that the Washington State Legislature ran away from the project.

Now the governor wants to give Washington state a multibillion dollar gift of Oregon taxpayers’ money by building it alone.

Gov. Kitzhaber took office the third time in 2010. The Department of Human Services’ new $80 million state computer system, started in 2009, has now consumed $80 million and is still not fully operational.

The Department of Administrative Services reported last year that the state has 16 major IT projects underway. Half of them indicate one or more high-risk elements related to its schedule, budget or overall project risk.

Gov. Kitzhaber has a solid track record of starting massively expensive new projects and then walking away from them just when they need supervision the most. He has wasted almost a half billion dollars of your tax money in the last four years. That is $500 for every family of four in the state of Oregon.

The governor’s record is not just one of a failed project. It is one of a failure to lead, to supervise and to care what happens to money the rest of us work so hard for every day. The governor recently said about Oregon, “This isn’t New Jersey.” He’s right. But it isn’t Russia, either.

We do not need a governor for life who is uninterested in actually governing. Maybe three terms are enough for Oregon. We really cannot afford excuses for wasting another $1 billion during a fourth term. In baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out. That makes a lot sense when considering this governor’s bid for a fourth term.

n

Rep. Dennis Richardson has served in the Oregon Legislature since first being elected in 2002. He is a declared candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2016.

Latest video:

Parkdale third graders sing "12 Disaster Days of Christmas"

Welcome to your sing-able Christmas gift list.
What follows is an emergency rendition of “12 Days of Christmas” – for outfitting your home or car in case of snow storm, earthquake, flood or other emergency.
Read it as a simple list, or sing it to the tune of “12 Days” – you know, as in “ … and a partridge in a pear tree…”
Not to make light of it, but the song is a familiar framework for a set of gift ideas that you could consider gathering together, even if the recipient already owns items such as a bunch of coats, tire chains and flashlights. Stores throughout the Gorge are stocked up on all these items. Buying all 12 days might be prohibitive, but here are three ideas for checking any of the dozen off your list (notations follow, 1-12.) The gift items needed to stay warm, dry and safe are also coded to suggest items in your abode (A) in your car (C) or both (B).
12 Gallons of Water (A)
11 Family meals (B)
10 Cans of propane (A)
9 Hygiene bags (B)
8 Packs of batteries (A)
7 Spare coats (B)
6 Bright red flares (C)
5 Cozy blankets (B)
4 Tire chains (C)
3 Flashlights (B)
2 cell phone chargers (B)
1 And a crush-proof first aid kit (B)
Price ranges? Here’s a few quotes for days Three, Two, Four and Nine:
n A family gift of flashlights (three will run $15-30, Hood River Supply, Tum-A-Lum)
n Cell phone chargers (two will run $30-60)
n Tire chains (basic set, $30, Les Schwab, returnable if unused for the winter)
n Family meals ($100 or so should cover the basics for three or four reasonably well-fed days)
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The home kit should be kept in a handy place near an exit, and remember that water needs to be replenished every few months.
If you have a solid first aid kit already, switch out the gift idea with “and-a-sto-o-u-t- tub-for it-all …”
Otherwise, it’s a case of assembling your home or car kits and making sure all members of the family know what the resources are and how to use them (ie flares and propane).
Emergency situations are at worst life-threatening, at best deeply uncomfortable if you and your family are left without power for an extended period, or traveling and find yourself in a situation where you need to wait out a storm, lengthy traffic delay, or other crisis.
Notes on the 12 gift ideas:
12 – Gallons of water: that’s one per person in a four-member family to last for three days, the recommended minimum to be prepared for utility outages.
11 – Easy-open packaged goods, energy bars, dried food and nuts are good things to include for nutrition. Think of what your family of four needs for three days to stay fortified and hydrated (see number 12). Can-opener also recommended
10 – If you have a propane camping stove, keep extra fuel handy.
9 – Hygiene bags: put packaged moistened towelettes, toilet paper, and plastic ties in large garbage bags (for personal sanitation)
Resource list courtesy of Hood River County Emergency Management, Barbara Ayers, manager/ 541-386-1213.
The county also reminds residents to Get a Kit, Make A Plan to connect your family if separated, and Stay Informed. See www.co.hood-river.or.us to opt-in for citizen alerts. Enlarge